House goes after Trump with bill to curb presidential abuses of power

The House passed a sweeping legislative package on Thursday designed to guard against abuses of presidential powers as part of a package of reforms put forth by Democrats in the wake of former President Trump’s White House tenure.

The legislation, titled the Protecting our Democracy Act, passed almost entirely along party lines by a vote of 220-208. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who has been critical of his party’s continued embrace of Trump, was the only Republican to vote to pass it, with all Democrats in support.

Passage of the bill came as President Biden convened global leaders on Thursday to pledge new commitments to democracy at a time when traditional democratic traditions in the U.S. have faced unprecedented threats in recent years. 

The legislation proposes statutory reforms in response to Trump’s refusal to concede that Biden won the 2020 election; the blanket stonewalling by Trump officials in response to House Democrats’ subpoenas; Trump issuing pardons to his political allies; and repeated violations of a law prohibiting government officials from using their positions to engage in political activities. Democrats compared the legislative package to the campaign finance and ethics reforms made in the aftermath of the Nixon administration.

“The need for stronger guardrails is greater than ever,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chief author of the bill and House Intelligence Committee chairman who led the first impeachment inquiry against Trump in 2019. 

“Although the Trump presidency demonstrated the need for wholesale reinforcement of our democratic institutions, the Protecting our Democracy Act is less about the past than it is about the future,” Schiff said.

Republicans blasted the legislation as unnecessary and an attempt to exert excessive control over the executive branch.

“After nearly a year in power, it’s time for Democrats to actually start governing and abandon their obsession with Donald Trump,” said Rep. James Comer (Ky.), the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, arguing that the bill “diminishes the power of the executive branch.”

The wide-ranging legislation put forth by Democrats would seek to establish more guardrails by, in part, requiring the Justice Department to provide information to Congress about any presidential pardon or commutation in cases involving a president or their relatives and suspending the statute of limitations for any federal crime committed by a sitting president or vice president.

It would further expedite the judicial process for congressional subpoena enforcement actions, after Trump officials effectively evaded participating in House Democrats’ investigations as court proceedings dragged on for months. In addition, it would authorize courts to issue fines to government officials who refuse to cooperate with congressional subpoenas.

Democrats were also frustrated over the years in their efforts to obtain Trump’s tax returns, which the former president refused to disclose from the time he launched his campaign in 2015.

A provision of the bill would require the president and vice president, as well as major-party candidates for those offices, to release ten years’ worth of tax returns to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). And if they refused to disclose the returns, the Treasury Department would be required to provide them to the FEC, which would make them public. 

Another provision of the bill would require political committees to report to the FBI and FEC about certain foreign contacts. And in turn, the FBI would have to inform congressional intelligence committees about any reported contacts.

More than a year after the election, Trump continues to falsely claim that he didn’t lose the 2020 contest to Biden. Those falsehoods ultimately led to a mob of his supporters violently storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to stop Congress from formally ratifying the election results.

Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that Biden won resulted in a delay of the ascertainment process that allows the formal presidential transition to begin. The General Services Administration (GSA) didn’t officially inform Biden that the Trump administration was ready to begin the process until more than two weeks after Biden was declared the winner in the election. 

House Democrats’ bill would require each eligible presidential candidate and vice presidential candidate to be treated as the winner if the GSA doesn’t begin the transition process within five days of an election, until an ascertainment is made or Congress certifies the actual winner. 

Despite Democrats’ control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, the bill faces long odds for advancing in the Senate given a likely GOP filibuster.

At least two centrist Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), have remained adamant all year against changing Senate filibuster rules so that 60 votes aren’t required to advance almost all legislation.

Schiff urged his Democratic colleagues across the Capitol to establish an exemption to the filibuster for bills related to voting rights and protecting democracy. 

“I think any delay in passage of these democracy reforms continues to put our country at risk and this experiment in self-governance at risk,” Schiff said.